1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to data centers. More particularly, the present invention relates to managing utilization of network intrusion detection systems in a dynamic data center.
2. Related Art
Network intrusion detection systems are becoming essential to building a safe a secure network. The network intrusion detection system can be utilized to analyze or inspect inbound and outbound network communication data. In particular, the network intrusion detection system can identify suspicious patterns or anomalies to normal patterns that may indicate malicious activity or an attack on the network. Typically, the network intrusion detection systems are distributed throughout the network. In many cases, the network intrusion detection systems are positioned to monitor network communication data near firewalls. Both outside intruders and inside intruders can be detected with network intrusion detection system. There are many implementations for the network intrusion detection system. The network intrusion detection system may be a specialized hardware component with specialized network intrusion detection software. Alternatively, the specialized network intrusion detection software can be operated on general purpose hardware. Moreover, the specialized network intrusion detection software as well as other applications can be operated on general purpose hardware.
Although the network intrusion detection system is useful, incorporating the network intrusion detection system into the network can be difficult. Typically, the hardware portion of the network intrusion detection system is manually installed and wired into the network. This can be an error prone operation. Moreover, the software component of the network intrusion detection system is manually installed and configured. This can also be an error prone process. Additionally, the network resources such as a firewall, a gateway system, a network switch, and a network router, have to be manually configured to route the network communication data from the appropriate monitoring points on the network to the appropriate network intrusion detection systems. Even after this effort, the capacity of the network intrusion detection systems may be underutilized or exceeded at various monitoring points, causing inefficient use of the network intrusion detection systems.
In sum, the current process of incorporating network intrusion detection systems into a network is costly, time consuming, and inefficient.